Inspiration
by Miss Celsius
Summary: ItaSaku:: A collection of thirty short and unrelated pieces, each inspired by a single word prompt and the connection between two people. Ratings and universes may change from chapter to chapter.
1. Beginning

Beginning

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"Get out."

Itachi opened his eyes. Through the fogginess induced by heavy, drug and chakra-aided sleep, he gazed up at the young woman who had woken him. Her voice's edge was subtle and softened by humor and tiredness—the latter of which he understood all too well. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, refocused on her, and tried his dry throat. Only a thin, questioning sound passed through his parted lips.

"I said get out." She rested her hand on her hip, and she stared at him. After a second, her stern demeanor faded against his scrutiny and gave way into an awkward smile. "I'm kidding."

His temples throbbed and his muscles ached. However, the constant breathlessness, the pain in his lungs, and the sting behind his eyes seemed to have dissipated. When had he been this way last? Unscarred. Unwounded. Knitting his brows together, Itachi pushed himself to sit upright.

The medic grabbed his shoulder but drew back just as quickly as if his skin had burned her. Her fingers hovered just above his arm, curled uncertainly. "Ah… No, seriously, it was a joke. Don't leave just yet. I'm Haruno Sakura, but I think you know that already. I'm your doctor. And we fought together."

Humor and sheepishness melded together to lower her tone near the end of her sentence. Clutching a clipboard to her breast, she stood frozen somewhere between treating him like something accessible or untouchable. Itachi frowned, although concentration rather than displeasure furrowed the space between his brows.

"Why am I here?" he asked finally.

Sakura lifted her brow at him before tapping her cheek. "Well, if you must know, your wounds were nearly fatal. You would have been released sooner… had we not detected the disease you decided to leave untreated." She paused pointedly, crossing her arms. "I fixed your eyes while you were here too since I had some time."

Itachi was silent. Sakura seemed to gain more nerve because she pressed his shoulder firmly but calmly and guided him back onto the mattress. He surprisingly complied.

"I really want you to rest, though. You'll need your strength to talk to the Hokage," she continued coolly, although her grin betrayed her. His cold expression tensed in subdued shock until it relaxed into a wordless disbelief. "Your bill of health is entirely clean, so after you sort out everything, you are free."

His eyes glittered and his lips formed a thin line as he fought back the range of emotions that surged through him. The white ceiling and walls, the obscured window, and the sterile smell of the hospital room offered no solace, no advice. At last, he looked to the pink-haired woman standing above him, haloed in the light streaming in from outside.

"I never imagined I would be given this opportunity."

She sat down on the edge of his bed and laid her hand on his arm very lightly. "Yeah."

They sat in silence for a long while. "So, what are you gonna do now?"

Itachi inhaled deeply: the first full, clear breath he had taken in a long time. "I'm not sure."

"That's not a bad thing," Sakura said pensively. "You have so many options. It's… a chance to begin again."

He said nothing. Even so, she smiled down him so gently and so sincerely, he felt the understanding. He felt the light caress of her thumb against his skin before she rose from the bed and left the room. He felt the possibility lingering in her wake. He felt, most intensely and most poignantly, truly at peace.


	2. Accusation

Oh man I am bad at this daily update thing…

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Accusation

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Loneliness made the wounds smart deeper than anything, she decided. Confidants offered sympathy but little closure, while the one person with the ability to do something, his brother, valued stability too much to intervene. Moreover, there hovered a feeling of disbelief. People seemed to think Uchiha Itachi incapable of cruelty.

But few had seen him on the battlefield with his cool calculation so intense and detached that he could silence—and even seem to kill— his gentle, kind nature. However, Sakura had learned that her home, too, could be a sort of battleground.

She lay bloodied on her bed, though no trace of red touched her pale skin that seemed almost sickly pallid in the moonlight. His exact words eluded her, but they didn't matter to her. The hurt they caused did. The hurt they caused lingered. The bubbling anger his audacity created, the venom provoked out of his silver tongue, and a hollowing sadness forged by his dismissiveness pounded at her temples and twisted her heart. The nature and reason of the fight had fled.

Sakura only wished they had taken along some of her pride—the one that had urged her to push him just a bit farther, to the very edges of his trauma-scarred capabilities. She knew subconscious knew then and acutely thought about now that Itachi's ability to function completely normally was limited. But her pride had deluded her—and now she wished she could sacrifice it all just to mend these wounds.

Yes, he had maintained her independence, had asserted her correctness, and had stood up for herself. Yes, she was right, and on a base level, she was self-satisfied. However, she questioned if she had preserved herself at all. Her heart, so big and compassionate and fickle, lay smarting and labored in her chest. Her accusations were stupid. They were rash. Self-professed correctness, now that the hot and thrilling anger had boiled down to nothing, hardly measured to feeling whole.

Sakura blinked her sleepless eyes open and ran her fingers over the empty side of the bed. Her stomach twisted. The clock on the nightstand read three in the morning—seven hours since he had vanished out of her door and into the darkness. She squeezed shut her eyes, feeling the burning warmth of tears, but suddenly, she jerked upright when the door creaked open.

She held her breath and sat fixed in place, her fingers white and rigid in the sheets. Footsteps echoed in the dark silence of the room until Itachi slid into her vision and stared at her steadily and silently.

Through the tired hardness, she could see the tentative calmness in his eyes. After a moment of regarding her, he climbed onto the bed and stretched out over the rumpled sheets. She said nothing, but she scooted forward until she could place her forehead on his chest. Slowly, almost awkwardly, she put her arms around him only to feel him pull her closer.

Sakura inhaled his scent and let a tear slide down her cheek and into his shirt. The ache, as expected, did linger just barely. But when he kissed the top of her head and she smiled just barely, the anger simmered itself away, the sadness slipped into relief, and she felt oddly free.


End file.
